Abstract

The removal of free-surface multiples from seismic reflection data remains an essential processing step before the application of prestack migration. Slowly decaying water layer multiples arising from a strong impedance contrast at the sea floor severely degrade the quality of the seismogram. In addition, peg-leg multiples generated from structurally complex 3D geologic bodies create a complex set of reverberations that can easily obscure weak primary reflections. In other areas, diffracted multiples from shallow point diffractors generate a “cloud” of multiple energy masking underlying primaries.